Aside from trial and error, anyone have any ideas on the best way to learn game development? I’m interested in 3D modeling/animation, texture creation, and of course, Unreal Engine! At the moment, I’ve signed up for Digitaltutors which is great, but it’s a bit unstructured, even when using their “learning paths.” If anyone knows a better way to learn game development and game asset creation for beginners, let me know!
*Note: at the moment I’m still in college working towards an MBA, so I’m not looking to actually take game development courses in college
In my opinion the best way to learn game dev is to create a own litte game or level. Because then you will have to learn everything that is needed to create models, textures,…
Short answer you learn what you need when you need it. Its a much better method than trying to learn a complete set of skills before hand as you will more than likely waste time learning a skill you didn’t need to know or need to know in that level of detail. Just have a clear idea for the end goal with clear objective goals and keep hammering at it until you reach it.
I’m using Maya at the moment, I was thinking of signing up for GameInstitute’s courses but they us 3DS and don’t teach Mudbox, Motionbuilder, or Unreal Engine.
Then just search on youtube for tutorials, there you will find plenty of good ones for maya -> just a hint when you start creating models: when you use static lightning in your level, create a 2nd uv channel with a lightmap for your model! Otherwise you will get overlapping uvs -> bad light result
After you have the basis, the best things to do is to try do small complete games. The best way to do this is joining one of the available game jam (here you can find a really nice calendar ://compohub.net/). If you can, join a jam in a physical location, you will find a lot of people to make game with and from which you can learn a lot.
Simply get a book and work through it! I learnt how to use Blender through Blender for dummies and it was really smooth and easy to understand
Books are normally quite structured so if you read end to end and do everything the book tells you to do in order, you should get a solid understanding of the software
I will second the help that Minister of Milk gave. Books are a great way to help one learn any type of program. Just realize that everything takes time. I’ve had to slow myself down sometimes because I can very impatient.
-> just a hint when you start creating models: when you use static lightning in your level, create a 2nd uv channel with a lightmap for your model! Otherwise you will get overlapping uvs -> bad light result